“Like what?”
“Oh you know … being a nine days’ wonder.”
“Why I don’t know at all Mr. Goldweiser.”
“Women know everything but they wont let on.”
Ellen sits in a gown of nilegreen silk in a springy armchair at the end of a long room jingling with talk and twinkle of chandeliers and jewelry, dotted with the bright moving black of evening clothes and silveredged colors of women’s dresses. The curve of Harry Goldweiser’s nose merges directly into the curve of his bald forehead, his big rump bulges over the edges of a triangular gilt stool, his small brown eyes measure her face like antennae as he talks to her. A woman nearby smells of sandalwood. A woman with orange lips and a chalk face under an orange turban passes talking to a man with a pointed beard. A hawk-beaked woman with crimson hair puts her hand on a man’s shoulder from behind. “Why how do you do, Miss Cruikshank; it’s surprising isn’t it how everybody in the world is always at the same place at the same time.” Ellen sits in the armchair drowsily listening, coolness of powder on her face and arms, fatness of rouge on her lips, her body just bathed fresh as a violet under the silk dress, under the silk underclothes; she sits dreamily, drowsily listening. A sudden twinge of men’s voices knotting about her. She sits up cold white out of reach like a lighthouse. Men’s hands crawl like bugs on the unbreakable glass. Men’s looks blunder and flutter against it helpless as moths. But in deep pitblackness inside something clangs like a fire engine.
George Baldwin stood beside the breakfast table with a copy of the New York Times folded in his hand. “Now Cecily,” he was saying, “we must be sensible about these things.”
“Cant you see that I’m trying to be sensible?” she said in a jerking snivelly voice. He stood looking at her without sitting down rolling a corner of the paper between his finger and thumb. Mrs. Baldwin was a tall woman with a mass of carefully curled chestnut hair piled on top of her head. She sat before the silver coffeeservice fingering the sugarbowl with mushroomwhite fingers that had very sharp pink nails.
“George I cant stand it any more that’s all.” She pressed her quaking lips hard together.
“But my dear you exaggerate. …”
“How exaggerate? … It means our life has been a pack of lies.”
“But Cecily we’re fond of each other.”
“You married me for my social position, you know it. … I was fool enough to fall in love with you. All right, it’s over.”
“It’s not true. I really loved you. Dont you remember how terrible you thought it was you couldnt really love me?”
“You brute to refer to that. … Oh it’s horrible!”
The maid came in from the pantry with bacon and eggs on a tray. They sat silent looking at each other. The maid swished out of the room and closed the door. Mrs. Baldwin put her forehead down on the edge of the table and began to cry. Baldwin sat staring at the headlines in the paper. Assassination of Archduke Will Have Grave Consequences. Austrian Army Mobilized. He went over and put his hand on her crisp hair.
“Poor old Cecily,” he said.
“Dont touch me.”
She ran out of the room with her handkerchief to her face. He sat down, helped himself to bacon and eggs and toast and began to eat; everything tasted like paper. He stopped eating to scribble a note on a scratchpad he kept in his breast pocket behind his handkerchief: See Collins vs. Arbuthnot, N.Y.S.C. Appel. Div.
The sound of a step in the hall outside caught his ear, the click of a latch. The elevator had just gone down. He ran four flights down the steps. Through the glass and wrought-iron doors of the vestibule downstairs he caught sight of her on the curb, standing tall and stiff, pulling on her gloves. He rushed out and took her by the hand just as a taxi drove up. Sweat beaded on his forehead and was prickly under his collar. He could see himself standing there with the napkin ridiculous in his hand and the colored doorman grinning and saying, “Good mornin, Mr. Baldwin, looks like it going to be a fine day.” Gripping her hand tight, he said in a low voice through his teeth:
“Cecily there’s something I want to talk to you about. Wont you wait a minute and we’ll go downtown together? … Wait about five minutes please,” he said to the taxidriver. “We’ll be right down.” Squeezing her wrist hard he walked back with her to the elevator. When they stood in the hall of their own apartment, she suddenly looked him straight in the face with dry blazing eyes.
“Come in here Cecily,” he said gently. He closed their bedroom door and locked it. “Now lets talk this over quietly. Sit down dear.” He put a chair behind her. She sat down suddenly stiffly like a marionette.
“Now look here Cecily you have no right to talk the way you do about my friends. Mrs. Oglethorpe is a friend of mine. We occasionally take tea together in some perfectly public place and that’s all. I would invite her up here but I’ve been afraid you would be rude to her. … You cant go on giving away to your insane jealousy like this. I allow you complete liberty and trust you absolutely. I think I have the right to expect the same confidence from you. … Cecily do be my sensible little girl again. You’ve been listening to what a lot of old hags fabricate out of whole cloth maliciously to make you miserable.”
“She’s not the only one.”
“Cecily I admit frankly there were times soon after we were married … when … But that’s all over years ago. … And whose fault was it? … Oh Cecily a woman like you cant understand the physical urgences of a man like me.”
“Havent I done my best?”
“My dear these things arent anybody’s fault. … I dont blame
