Then, still holding the recaptured sensation of what she had felt for him in the past, she grasped a quality that had always been part of it, now suddenly clear to her for the first time: if that desire was a celebration of one’s life, then what she had felt for Francisco had always been a celebration of her future, like a moment of splendor gained in part payment of an unknown total, affirming some promise to come. In the instant when she grasped it, she knew also the only desire she had ever experienced not in token of the future but of the full and final present. She knew it by means of an image—the image of a man’s figure standing at the door of a small granite structure. The final form of the promise that had kept her moving, she thought, was the man who would, perhaps, remain a promise never to be reached.
But this—she thought in consternation—was that view of human destiny which she had most passionately hated and rejected: the view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve.
Her
life and
her
values could not bring her to that, she thought; she had never found beauty in longing for the impossible and had never found the possible to be beyond her reach. But she had come to it and she could find no .answer.
She could not give him up or give up the world—she thought, looking at Galt, that evening. The answer seemed harder to find in his presence. She felt that no problem existed, that nothing could stand beside the fact of seeing him and nothing would ever have the power to make her leave—and, simultaneously, that she would have no right to look at him if she were to renounce her railroad. She felt that she owned him, that the unnamed had been understood between them from the start—and, simultaneously, that he was able to vanish from her life and, on some future street of the outside world, to pass her by in unweighted indifference.
She noted that he did not question her about Francisco. When she spoke of her visit, she could find no reaction in his face, neither of approval nor of resentment. It seemed to her that she caught an imperceptible shading in his gravely attentive expression: he looked as if this were a matter about which he did not choose to feel.
Her faint apprehension grew into a question mark, and the question mark turned into a drill, cutting deeper and deeper into her mind through the evenings that followed—when Galt left the house and she remained alone. He went out every other night, after dinner, not telling her where he went, returning at midnight or later. She tried not to allow herself fully to discover with what tension and restlessness she waited for his return. She did not ask him where he spent his evenings. The reluctance that stopped her was her too urgent desire to know; she kept silent in some dimly intentional form of defiance, half in defiance of him, half of her own anxiety.
She would not acknowledge the things she feared or give them the solid shape of words, she knew them only by the ugly, nagging pull of an unadmitted emotion. Part of it was a savage resentment, of a kind she had never experienced before, which was her answer to the dread that there might be a woman in his life; yet the resentment was softened by some quality of health in the thing she feared, as if the threat could be fought and even, if need be, accepted. But there was another, uglier dread: the sordid shape of self-sacrifice, the suspicion, not to be uttered about him, that he wished to remove himself from her path and let its emptiness force her back to the man who was his best-loved friend.
Days passed before she spoke of it. Then, at dinner, on an evening when he was to leave, she became suddenly aware of the peculiar pleasure she experienced while watching him eat the food she had prepared—and suddenly, involuntarily, as if that pleasure gave her a right she dared not identify, as if enjoyment, not pain, broke her resistance, she heard herself asking him, “What is it you’re doing every other evening?”
He answered simply, as if he had taken for granted that she knew it, “Lecturing.”
“What?”
“Giving a course of lectures on physics, as I do every year during this month. It’s my ... What are you laughing at?” he asked, seeing the look of relief, of silent laughter that did not seem to be directed at his words—and then, before she answered, he smiled suddenly, as if he had guessed the answer, she saw some particular, intensely personal quality in his smile, which was almost a quality of insolent intimacy—in contrast to the calmly impersonal, casual manner with which he went on. “You know that this is the month when we all trade the achievements of our real professions. Richard Halley is to give concerts, Kay Ludlow is to appear in two plays written by authors who do not write for the outside world—and I give lectures, reporting on the work I’ve done during the year.”
“Free lectures?”
“Certainly not. It’s ten dollars per person for the course.”
“I want to hear you.”
He shook his head. “No. You’ll be allowed to attend the concerts, the plays or any form of presentation for your own enjoyment, but not my lectures or any other sale of ideas which you might carry out of this valley. Besides, my customers, or students, are only those who have a practical purpose in taking my course: Dwight Sanders, Lawrence Hammond, Dick McNamara, Owen Kellogg, a few others. I’ve added one beginner this year: Quentin Daniels.”
“Really?” she said, almost with a touch of jealousy. “How can he afford anything that expensive?”
“On credit. I’ve given him a time-payment plan. He’s worth it.”
“Where do you lecture?”
“In the hangar, on Dwight Sanders’ farm.”
“And where do you work during the year?”
“In my laboratory.”
She asked cautiously, “Where is your laboratory? Here, in the valley?”
He held her eyes for a moment, letting her see that his glance was amused and that he knew her purpose, then answered, “No.”
“You’ve lived in the outside world for all of these twelve years?”
“Yes.”
“Do you”—the thought seemed unbearable—“do you hold some such job as the others?”
“Oh yes.” The amusement in his eyes seemed stressed by some special meaning.
“Don’t tell me that you’re a second assistant bookkeeper!”
“No, I’m not.”
“Then what do you do?”
“I hold the kind of job that the world wishes me to hold.”
“Where?”
He shook his head. “No, Miss Taggart. If you decide to leave the valley, this is one of the things that you are not to know.”
He smiled again with that insolently personal quality which now seemed to say that he knew the threat contained in his answer and what it meant to her, then he rose from the table.
When he had gone, she felt as if the motion of time were an oppressive weight in the stillness of the house, like a stationary, half-solid mass slithering slowly into some faint elongation by a tempo that left her no measure to know whether minutes had passed or hours. She lay half-stretched in an armchair of the living room, crumpled by that heavy, indifferent lassitude which is not the will to laziness, but the frustration of the will to a secret violence that no lesser action can satisfy.
That special pleasure she had felt in watching him eat the food she had prepared—she thought, lying still, her eyes closed, her mind moving, like time, through some realm of veiled slowness—it had been the pleasure of knowing that she had provided him with a sensual enjoyment, that one form of his body’s satisfaction had come from her. . . . There is reason, she thought, why a woman would wish to cook for a man . . . oh, not as a duty, not as a chronic career, only as a rare and special rite in symbol of ... but what have they made of it, the preachers of woman’s duty? ... The castrated performance of a sickening drudgery was held to be a woman’s proper virtue—while that which gave it meaning and sanction was held as a shameful sin . . . the work of dealing with grease, steam and slimy peelings in a reeking kitchen was held to be a spiritual matter, an act of compliance with her moral duty—while the meeting of two bodies in a bedroom was held to be a physical indulgence, an act of surrender to an animal instinct, with no glory, meaning or pride of spirit to be claimed by the animals involved.
She leaped abruptly to her feet. She did not want to think of the outer world or of its moral code. But she knew that that was not the subject of her thoughts. And she did not want to think of the subject her mind was intent on pursuing, the subject to which it kept returning against her will, by some will of its own....
She paced the room, hating the ugly, jerky, uncontrolled looseness of her movements—torn between the need to let her motion break the stillness, and the knowledge that this was not the form of break she wanted. She lighted cigarettes, for an instant’s illusion of purposeful action—and discarded them within another instant, feeling the weary distaste of a substitute purpose. She looked at the room like a restless beggar, pleading with physical objects to give her a motive, wishing she could find something to clean, to mend, to polish—while knowing that no task was worth the effort. When nothing seems worth the effort—said some stern voice in her mind—it’s a screen to hide a wish that’s worth too much; what do you want? ... She snapped a match, viciously jerking the flame to the tip of a cigarette she noticed hanging, unlighted, in the corner of her mouth.... What do you want?—repeated the voice that sounded severe as a judge. I want him to come back!—she answered, throwing the words, as a soundless cry, at some accuser within her, almost as one would throw a bone to a pursuing beast, in the hope of distracting it from pouncing upon the rest.
I want him back—she said softly, in answer to the accusation that there was no reason for so great an impatience.... I want him back -she said pleadingly, in answer to the cold reminder that her answer did not balance the judge’s scale.... I want him back!—she cried defiantly, fighting not to drop the one superfluous, protective word in that sentence.
She felt her head drooping with exhaustion, as after a prolonged beating. The cigarette she saw between her fingers had burned the mere length of half an inch. She ground it out and fell into the armchair again.
I’m not evading it—she thought—I’m not evading it, it’s just that I can see no way to any answer.... That which you want—said the voice, while she stumbled through a thickening fog—is yours for the taking, but anything less than your full acceptance, anything less than your full conviction, is a betrayal of everything he is.... Then let him damn me—she thought, as if the voice were now lost in the fog and would not hear her—let him damn me tomorrow.... I want him ...back.... She heard no answer, because her head had fallen softly against the chair; she was asleep.
When she opened her eyes, she saw him standing three feet away, looking down at her, as if he had been watching her for some time.
She saw his face and, with the clarity of undivided perception, she saw the meaning of the expression on his face: it was the meaning she had fought for hours. She saw it without astonishment, because she had not yet regained her awareness of any reason why it should astonish her.
“This is the way you look,” he said softly, “when you fall asleep in your office,” and she knew that he, too, was not fully aware of letting her hear it: the way he said it told her how often he had thought of it and for what reason. “You look as if you would awaken in a world where you had nothing to hide or to fear,” and she knew that the first movement of her face had been a smile, she knew it in the moment when it vanished, when she grasped that they were both awake. He added quietly, with full awareness, “But here, it’s true.”
Her first emotion of the realm of reality was a sense of power. She sat up with a flowing, leisurely movement of confidence, feeling the flow of the motion from muscle to muscle through her body. She asked, and it was the slowness, the sound of casual curiosity, the tone of taking the implications for granted, that gave to her voice the faintest sound of disdain, “How did you know what I look like in ... my office?”
“I told you that I’ve watched you for years.”
“How were you able to watch me that thoroughly? From where?”
“I will not answer you now,” he said, simply, without defiance.
The slight movement of her shoulder leaning back, the pause, then the lower, huskier tone of her voice, left a hint of smiling triumph to trail behind her words: “When did you see me for the first time?”
“Ten years ago,” he answered, looking straight at her, letting her see that he was answering the full, unnamed meaning of her question.
“Where?” The word was almost a command.
He hesitated, then she saw a faint smile that touched only his lips, not his eyes, the kind of smile with which one contemplates—with longing, bitterness and pride—a possession purchased at an excruciating cost; his eyes seemed directed, not at her, but at the girl of that time. “Underground, in the Taggart Terminal,” he answered.
She became suddenly conscious of her posture: she had let her shoulder blades slide down against the chair, carelessly, half-lying, one leg stretched forward—and with her sternly tailored, transparent blouse, her wide peasant skirt hand-printed in violent colors, her thin stocking and high-heeled pump, she did not look like a railroad executive—the consciousness of it struck her in answer to his eyes that seemed to be seeing the unattainable—she looked like that which she was: his servant girl. She knew the moment when some faintest stress of the brilliance in his dark green eyes removed the veil of distance, replacing the vision of the past by the act of seeing her immediate person. She met his eyes with that insolent glance which is a smile without movement of facial muscles.
He turned away, but as he moved across the room his steps were as eloquent as the sound of a voice. She knew that he wanted to leave the room, as he always left it, he had never stayed for longer than a brief good night when he came home. She watched the course of his struggle, whether by means of his steps, begun in one direction and swerving in another, or by means of her certainty that her body had become an instrument for the direct perception of his, like a screen reflecting both movements and motives—she could not tell. She knew only that he who had never started or lost a battle against himself, now had no power to leave this room.