MASSAGE-CREAM; THEME AND VARIATIONS

July 20.

The hardest thing for Eugenia about these terribly hard days of suspense was to keep her self-control in her own room. Of course for her as for any civilized being, it was always possible to keep herself in hand with people looking on. But for years she had not had to struggle so when alone, for poise and self-mastery. Her room at the Crittendens’, which had been hers so long, and which Marise had let her furnish with her own things, was no longer the haven of refuge it had been from the bitter, raw crudity of the Vermont life. She tried to fill the empty hours of Neale’s daily absences from the house with some of the fastidious, delicate occupations of which she had so many, but they seemed brittle in her hot hands, and broke when she tried to lean on them. A dozen times a day she interrupted herself to glance with apprehension at her reflection in the mirror, the Florentine mirror with the frame of brown wood carved, with the light, restrained touch of a good period, into those tasteful slender columns. And every time she looked, she was horrified and alarmed to see deep lines of thought, of hope, of impatience, of emotion, criss-crossing fatally on her face.

Then she would sit down before her curving dressing-table, gather the folds of her Persian room-dress about her, lift up her soul and go through those mental and physical relaxing exercises which the wonderful lecturer of last winter had explained. She let her head and shoulders and neck droop like a wilted flower-stem, while she took into her mind the greater beauty of a wilted flower over the crass rigidity of a growing one; she breathed deeply and slowly and rhythmically, and summoned to her mind far-off and rarely, difficultly, beautiful things; the tranquil resignation of Chinese roofs, tempered with the merry human note of their tilted corners; Arabian traceries; cunningly wrought, depraved wood-carvings in the corners of Gothic cathedrals; the gay and amusing pink rotundities of a Boucher ceiling. When she felt her face calm and unlined again, she put on a little massage cream, to make doubly sure, and rubbed it along where the lines of emotion had been.

But half an hour afterwards, as she lay stretched in the chaise-longue by the window, reading Claudel, or Strindberg, or Remy de Gourmont, she would suddenly find that she was not thinking of what was on the page, that she saw there only Marise’s troubled eyes while she and Marsh talked about the inevitable and essential indifference of children to their parents and the healthiness of this instinct; about the foolishness of the parents’ notion that they would be formative elements in the children’s lives; or on the other hand, if the parents did succeed in forcing themselves into the children’s lives, the danger of sexual mother-complexes. Eugenia found that instead of thrilling voluptuously, as she knew she ought, to the precious pain and bewilderment of one of the thwarted characters of James Joyce, she was, with a disconcerting and painful eagerness of her own, bringing up to mind the daunted silence Marise kept when they mentioned the fact that of course everybody nowadays knew that children are much better off in a big, numerous, robust group than in the nervous, tight isolation of family life; and that a really trained educator could look out for them much better than any mother, because he could let them alone as a mother never could.

She found that such evocations of facts poignantly vital to her personally, were devastatingly more troubling to her facial calm than any most sickening picture in d’Annunzio’s portrayal of small-town humanity in which she was trying to take the proper, shocked interest. Despite all her effort to remain tranquil she would guess by the stir of her pulses that probably she had lost control of herself again, and going to the mirror would catch her face all strained and tense in a breathless suspense.

But if there was one thing which life had taught her, it was persevering patience. She drew from the enameled bonbonnière one of the curious, hard sweet-meats from Southern China; lifted to her face the spicy-sweet spikes of the swamp-orchid in her Venetian glass vase; turned her eyes on the reproduction of the Gauguin Ja Orana Maria, and began to draw long, rhythmic breaths, calling on all her senses to come to her rescue. She let her arms and her head and her shoulders go limp again, and fixed her attention on rare and beautiful things of beauty . . . abandoning herself to the pictures called up by a volume of translated Japanese poems she had recently read . . . temples in groves . . . bells in the mist . . . rain on willow-trees . . . snow falling without wind. . . . How delicate and suggestive those poems were! How much finer, more subtle than anything in the Aryan languages!

She came to herself cautiously, glanced at her face in the mirror, and reached for the carved ivory pot of massage cream.

She decided then she would sew a little, instead of reading. The frill of lace in her net dress needed to be changed . . . such a bore having to leave your maid behind. She moved to the small, black-lacquered table where her work-box stood and leaned on it for a moment, watching the dim reflection of her pointed white fingers in the glistening surface of the wood. They did not look like Marise’s brown, uncared-for hands. She opened the inlaid box and took from it the thimble which she had bought in Siena, the little antique masterpiece of North Italian gold-work. What a fulfilment of oneself it was to make life beautiful by beautifying all its implements. What a revelation it might be to Neale, how a woman could make everything she touched exquisite, to Neale who had only known Marise, subdued helplessly to the roughness of the rough things about her, Marise who had capitulated to America and surrendered to the ugliness of American life.

But none of that, none of that! She was near the danger line again. She felt the flesh on her face begin to grow tense, and with her beautiful, delicate fore-fingers she smoothed her eyebrows into relaxed calm again.

She must keep herself occupied, incessantly; that was the only thing possible. She had been about to have recourse to the old, old tranquillizer of women, the setting of fine stitches. She would fix her mind on that . . . a frill of lace for the net dress . . . which lace? She lifted the cover from the long, satin-covered box and fingered over the laces in it, forcing herself to feel the suitable reaction to their differing physiognomies, to admire the robustness of the Carrick-Macross, the boldness of design of the Argentan, the complicated fineness of the English Point. She decided, as harmonizing best with the temperament of the net dress, on Malines, a strip of this perfect, first-Napoleon Malines. What an aristocratic lace it was, with its cobwebby fond-de-neige background and its fourpetaled flowers in the scrolls. Americans were barbarians indeed that Malines was so little known; in fact hardly recognized at all. Most Americans would probably take this priceless creation in her hand for something bought at a ten-cent store, because of its simplicity and classic reticence of design. They always wanted, as they would say themselves, something more to show for their money. Their only idea of “real lace,” as they vulgarly called it (as if anything could be lace that wasn’t real), was that showy, awful Brussels, manufactured for exportation, which was sold in those terrible tourists’ shops in Belgium, with the sprawling patterns made out of coarse braid and appliqued on, not an organic part of the life of the design.

She stopped her work for a moment to look more closely at the filmy lace in her hand, to note if the mesh of the reseau were circular or hexagonal. She fancied that she was the only American woman of her acquaintance who knew the difference, who had the least culture in the matter of lace . . . except Marise, of course, and it was positively worse for Marise to have been initiated and then turn back to commonness, than for those other well-meaning, Philistine American women who were at least innocently ignorant. Having known the exquisite lore of lace, how could Marise have let it and all the rest of the lore of civilization drop for these coarse occupations of hers, now? How could she have let life coarsen her, as it had, how could she have fallen into such common ways, with her sun-browned hair, and her roughened hands, and her inexactly adjusted dresses, and the fatal middle-aged lines beginning to show from the corner of the ear down into the neck, and not an effort made to stop them. But as to wrinkles, of course a woman as unrestrained as Marise was bound to get them early. She had never learned the ABC of woman’s wisdom, the steady cult of self-care, self-beautifying, self-refining. How long would it be before Neale . . .

No! None of that! She must get back to impersonal thoughts. What was it she had selected as subject for consideration? It had been lace. What about lace? Lace . . . ? Her mind balked, openly rebellious. She could not make it think of lace again. She was in a panic, and cast about her for some strong defense . . . oh! just the thing . . . the new hat.

She would try on the new hat which had just come from New York. She had been waiting for a leisurely moment, really to be able to put her attention on that.

She opened the gaily printed round pasteboard box, and took out the creation. She put it on with care, low over her eyebrows, adjusting it carefully by feel, before she looked at herself to get the first impression. Then, hand-glass in hand, she began to study it seriously from various angles. When she was convinced that from every view-point her profile had the unlovely and inharmonious silhouette fashionable that summer, she drew a long breath of relief, and took it off gently, looking at it with pleasure. Nothing gives one such self-confidence, she reflected, as the certainty of having the right sort of hat. How much better “chic” was than beauty!

With the hat still in her hand, her very eyes on it, she saw there before her, as plainly as though in a crystal ball, Marise’s attitude as she had stood with Marsh that evening before at the far end of the garden. Her body drawn towards his, the poise of her head, all of her listening intently while he talked . . . one could see how he was dominating her. A man with such a personality as his, regularly hypnotic when he chose, and practised in handling women, he would be able to do anything he liked with an impressionable creature like Marise, who as a girl was always under the influence of something or other. It was evident that he could put any idea he liked into Marise’s head just by looking at her hard enough. She had seen him do it . . . helped him do it, for that matter!

And so Neale must have seen. Anybody could! And Neale was not raising a hand, nor so much as lifting an eyebrow, just letting things take their course.

What could that mean except that he would welcome . . .

Oh Heavens! her pulse was hammering again. She sprang up and ran to the mirror. Yes, the mirror showed a face that scared her; haggard and pinched with a fierce desire.

There were not only lines now, there was a hollow in the cheek . . . or was that a shadow? It made her look a thousand years old. Massage would do that no good! And she had no faith in any of those “flesh-foods.” Perhaps she was underweight. The hideous strain and suspense of the last weeks had told on her. Perhaps she would better omit those morning exercises for a time, in this intense heat. Perhaps she would better take cream with her oatmeal again. Or perhaps cream of wheat would be better than oatmeal. How ghastly that made her look! But perhaps it was only a shadow. She could not summon courage enough to move and see. Finally she took up her hand-mirror, framed in creamy ivory, with a carved jade bead hanging from it by a green silk cord. She went to the window to get a better light on her face. She examined it, holding her breath; and drew a long, long sigh of respite and relief. It had been only a shadow!

But what a fright it had given her! Her heart was quivering yet. What unending vigilance it took to protect yourself from deep emotions. When it wasn’t one, it was another, that sprang on you unawares.

Another one was there, ready to spring also, the suddenly conceived possibility, like an idea thrust into her mind from the outside, that there might be some active part she could play in what was going on in this house. People did sometimes. If some chance for this offered . . . you never could tell when . . . a word might be . . . perhaps something to turn Marise from Neale long enough to . . .

She cast this idea off with shame for its crudeness. What vulgar raw things would come into your head when you let your mind roam idly . . . like cheap melodrama . . .

She would try the Vedanta deep-breathing exercises this time to quiet herself; and after them, breathing in and out through one nostril, and thinking of the Infinite, as the Yogi had told her.

She lay down flat on the bed for this, kicking off her quilted satin mules, and wriggling her toes loose in their lace-like silk stockings. She would lie on her back, look up at the ceiling, and fix her mind on the movement up and down of her navel in breathing, as the Vedanta priest recommended to quiet the spirit. Perhaps she could even say,

“Om . . . om . . . om . . .”

as they did.

No, no she couldn’t. She still had vestiges of that stupid, gross Anglo-Saxon self-consciousness clinging to her. But she would outgrow them, yet.

She lay there quiet and breathed slowly, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. And into her mind there slowly slid a cypress-shaded walk with Rome far below on one side, and a sun-ripened, golden, old wall on the other. She stood there with Marise, both so young, so young! And down the path towards them came a tall figure, with a bold clear face, a tender full-lipped mouth, and eyes that both smiled and were steady.

Helplessly she watched him come, groaning in spirit at what she knew would happen; but she could not escape till the ache in her throat swelled and broke, as she saw that his eyes were for Marise and his words, and all of his very self for which she . . .

So many years . . . so many years . . . with so much else in the world . . . not to have been able to cure that one ache . . . and she did not want to suffer . . . she wanted to be at rest, and have what she needed. The tears rose brimming to her eyes, and ran down on each side of her face to the pillow. Poor Eugenia! Poor Eugenia!

She was almost broken this time, but not entirely. There was some fight left in her. She got up from the bed, clenched her hands tightly, and stood in the middle of the floor, gathering herself together.

Down with it! Down! Down! Just now, at this time, when such an utterly unexpected dawn of a possible escape . . . to give way again.

She thought suddenly, “Suppose I give up the New-Thought way, always distracting your attention to something else, always suppressing your desire, resisting the pull you want to yield to. Suppose I try the Freud way, bringing the desire up boldly, letting yourself go, unresisting.” It was worth trying.

She sat down in a chair, her elbows on the dressing-table, and let herself go, gorgeously, wholly, epically, as she had been longing to ever since she had first intercepted that magnetic interchange of looks between Marsh and Marise, the day after her arrival, the day of the picnic-supper in that stupid old woman’s garden. That was when she had first known that something was up.

Why, how easy it was to let yourself go! They were right, the Freudians, it was the natural thing to do, you did yourself a violence when you refused to. It was like sailing off above the clouds on familiar wings, although it was the first time she had tried them. . . . Marise would fall wholly under Marsh’s spell, would run away and be divorced. Neale would never raise a hand against her doing this. Eugenia saw from his aloof attitude that it was nothing to him one way or the other. Any man who cared for his wife would fight for her, of course.

And it was so manifestly the best thing for Marise too, to have a very wealthy man looking out for her, that there could be no disturbing reflexes of regret or remorse for anybody to disturb the perfection of this fore-ordained adjustment to the Infinite. Then with the children away at school for all the year, except a week or two with their father . . . fine, modern, perfect schools, the kind where the children were always out of doors, Florida in winter and New England hills in summer. Those schools were horribly expensive . . . what was all her money for? . . . but they had the best class of wealthy children, carefully selected for their social position, and the teachers were so well paid that of course they did their jobs better than parents.

Then Neale, freed from slavery to those insufferable children, released from the ignoble, grinding narrowness of this petty manufacturing business, free to roam the world as she knew he had always longed to do . . . what a life they could have . . . India with Neale . . . China . . . Paris . . . they would avoid Rome perhaps because of unwelcome memories . . . Norway in summer-time. Think of seeing Neale fishing a Norway salmon brook . . . she and Neale on a steamer together . . . together . . .

She caught sight of her face in the mirror . . . that radiant, smiling, triumphant, young face, hers!

Yes, the Freud way was the best.