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Gargoyles

<h2>10</h2> In the park Lindstrum sat on a bench with Doris and talked. "All this," he said, "all this night and trees and things we feel more than we see, are like what you're like. But why should we call that love. Because love means to hold a woman in your arms. I don't care about holding a woman. I want to hold something else. If you hold something in your arms you haven't got it. It's what you can't get your fingers on that you own most. Because you dream about it. It's what you dream about that you own most." He spoke disconnectedly. There were pauses during which he allowed the night to punctuate his thoughts. "Have you written any more things since last time?" Doris asked. "No. I didn't bring anything with me." He was silent. Doris wished he would sit closer to her. His silence excited her. She could feel things moving in him. She became nervous. Her dark eyes looked fully at his profile and a pride elated her. Other men didn't stare like that into the night. They had fussy little eyes and fussy little bodies. They fidgeted around. But Lief sat as if he were turned to granite. There was something ominous about him. The glint of his straight eyes and the leather color of his face were ominous. She felt that he was powerful, more powerful than the spaces he stared into. He could stand up and swing the park around their heads. She wanted to come close to him. "Lief," she whispered, "why don't you come oftener. I get lonely for you. I hardly talk to anybody else." He nodded as if agreeing with her and saying silently, "That's right. Don't talk to anybody else." But he said nothing aloud. She wanted to be the thing he swung around his head. If he would take her up and destroy her it would make her crazy with happiness. She closed her fingers around his hand and trembled. Her body felt weak. Her arms were as if she no longer directed them. They were being drawn. "I'm so proud of you. You're so different from all of them, Lief. I can't stand them sometimes. They're terrible." He nodded his head with a ponderous air of sagacity. "They make me sick," she went on. "All of them. They're not like people but like something else. Like parts of people." He nodded his head again. She was all right—this girl. She didn't belong with the pack in the room he had left. She wasn't a little slut ... one of those lying, filthy ones. But he was afraid of her. He wanted to keep things like they were. If you let down to a woman she started climbing all over you and asking for this and for that. Anyway it was time to walk back now. There was a lot of work in the shop. He got up at six. They walked out of the park together. The spring night called for endings. The darkness hinted. The day with its houses and noises lingered like an unnatural memory in the shadows. What were people for? The darkness hinted. Doris felt a mist in her blood. So curious, the day. Unreal, empty. Noises that circled, faces that went on forever. People had been moving forever. They kept walking and walking. There was no ending to people. The years passed under their feet like a treadmill and they kept moving on. Now it was quiet. Beside this man she felt there was no more moving on. Her heart filled with impatience. It was hard to breathe. Her arms were heavy, overcrowded. "Oh," she whispered to herself, "I'll die. I'll die." But they continued to walk. The man's silences, his ominous reserves, his sagacious noddings had excited her. She felt angry with him. He had called for her a half dozen times in the last two months. They had met by accident in a book store. A clerk had introduced them. He called and they went for walks. But he said nothing. Once he had told her she was beautiful. Another time he had mentioned, as if it were a casual thing, that she was the sort of girl to whom he would like to make a gift. But of what, he didn't know. Some gift worthy, he said. She had been frightened of him at first. But gradually as she grew accustomed to his strange manners, his bristling silences, she became impatient, angry. He stopped. "I'll go this way," he announced. "Good-night." He stood looking at her for a long minute and then turning, walked away. She watched him but he didn't look back. She walked to the house alone. Her thoughts now were clear. He was a man who didn't want her but was looking for something of which she was a part. He never tried to touch her. He never said, "I love you," to her. But he did love. She knew that. He called it by other names and misunderstood himself. And he might go on that way till he died, misunderstanding himself. To be near her thrilled him. She remembered how he became taut, immobile, sitting on the bench. His arms quivered. Yet he never tried to embrace her. She thought about this as she walked to her home. Would he ever embrace her? She knew about his silences. She could even feel how he suffered inside because something was urging him that had no direction. It was this life in him that lured her. It stirred her senses. Nothing before had interested her. Days had passed with no difference in them. Now he made a difference. When she remembered him a pain that was like anger filled her. She would go to bed and lie in the dark dreaming of him with her eyes open. A languor made it difficult to walk. She smiled to herself. It was pleasant, sweet to think of him. For a moment the image of his face transfixed her. She whispered aloud, "Talk to me. Oh, please ... please...." Then images that disgusted her crowded her thought. They came of their own volition. Her sister Fanny kissing men. Her brother George kissing women. Keegan, the judge, Ramsey, Aubrey and Henrietta—they disgusted her with their continual love-making, kissing, dirtiness. People like that didn't understand anything else. Their bodies searched each other out and clung to each other. Bodies clenched together—she began to rage in silence against them. He called them the pack. They were like that—a pack of animals with nothing else but animal bodies to live with. She paused in her hating, a chill coming between her silent words. The company of images in her mind had dissolved. Their faces came together and blurred into a single face and she saw Lief Lindstrum holding her wildly against him, his lips open and hot against her mouth.... The company had gone. Her family was left in the library. She had intended going upstairs without speaking. But she came into the room and sat down. Fanny looked at her with a questioning innocence that said, "Dear me, I wonder what people do who walk in the park at night?" Her brother was talking. He looked at her with a smile and went on. "You mustn't think I'm a blockhead, mother, about these people here tonight, for instance. Just because I get along with them. I'll give you my theory of people. We were discussing our guests," he explained turning to Doris. She nodded. "Never believe them," he grinned. "They're all liars. The thing to do is to lie better than they. Honesty, purity, nobility—bah! I know what I'm talking about. That's what people tell each other they are. And they are, of course. Till they're found out. You said a little while ago I was lying. Of course I was. But not the way you mean. That breach of promise case really happened. I wasn't lying about that. You wait, you'll understand what I mean after a few years. I'm going to do things." He stood up and yawned. Mrs. Basine smiled happily at him. The day had tired her. She felt pleasantly responsible for her three children. Three human beings that belonged to her. At least she could pretend they did. And sometimes it was almost as nice dreaming of what they had in their minds as planning her own tomorrows. Basine went to his bedroom. He undressed and lay down. Sounds continued in the house. Doris coming upstairs. Fanny chattering to his mother. Water running in the bathroom. He turned the gas out and lay with his face toward the window. His body was weary. But he felt young. He thought of the many years ahead of him. Everything was new. Even the century had just begun. A new century. Life was a gay unknown. He thought about things. Things filled the future. They could not be seen or understood but their presence could be felt. Unlived years stretched ahead, like a track without end. He must be careful not to grow too serious. Lying was easy but he must avoid getting tangled up. Say anything you want to, but look out how hard you say it. People were easy. It would all come out beautifully. Success, power, fame, money, happiness—they were all easy. They would all come to him. People were fools and you could get ahead of them. He yawned. He almost fell asleep. His mind mumbled with words. His day dreams, his memories, his weariness jumbled dim pictures. Phantoms drifted without outline over his head. He fell asleep and dreamed he was in a brightly lighted hall. Men were cheering. Music played and people were yelling his name. In the dream he was going to make a speech. The brightly lighted hall grew larger and the crowd reached as far as he could see. But he didn't come out to make the speech. Instead a woman in a gaudy dress came out. Her face was white with powder and heavily painted. Her eyes were sunken. In the dream he shuddered because the great crowd would rave indignantly at the substitute who had come out to make the speech for him. But instead, a tremendous cheer went up at the sight of this woman and everybody yelled, "Basine ... Basine.... There he is. Hooray for Basine!" They mistook the woman for him. The woman began to make his speech. The one he had prepared. She spoke in a tired, hollow voice but the crowd continued to cheer. Where was he in the dream? There was no Basine in the dream. He kept wondering about this. There was no Basine but the crowd thought this woman in the gaudy dress with the painted face was Basine and they cheered her for him, calling her, "Basine...." while he, hiding somewhere, the dream didn't say where, listened to the woman and the cheers and the shouts of his name. He was saying to himself with a feeling of horror, "I know that woman they think is me. It's that woman Keegan and I met once. Keegan and I met her, by God!" He was going to stop something but the dream went away. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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