All Kneeling/Chapter 17
On a March morning, as every morning, Minnie pulled back the blue silk curtains, closed the windows, lit the fire, and turned on the bath water. Wakened by gentle noises, Christabel stretched, yawned, put her white feet into blue mules held by kneeling Minnie, wrapped herself in blue silk embroidered with daisies bigger than her head, and trailed to the bathroom.
Steam fragrant with perfume created to express her personality veiled black men peeping from behind orchid-dripping trees, painted on her bathroom walls by young Boris Orlovski, a cousin of the Czar's, some people thought. She was wonderful to exiled Russians. "More wonderful to the men than the women," catty Mrs. Wickett said, but this Christabel felt was not worth noticing, it was so evidently caused by jealousy.
"It's rather amusing how ladies give themselves away!" she had said to Gobby, when he indignantly reported Mrs. Wickett's remark. "I did my best to make Boris and one or two others be nice to Adéle Wickett when they were all here one afternoon, and they were just as naughty as they could be." She laughed tolerantly. "Poor Adéle! Naturally she consoles herself by blaming me!"
Besides, she had had several little Russian countesses in national costume sing at her teas.
Invitations, letters from strangers:
"Dear Miss Caine:"May a lonely shut-in thank you for having helped her pass weary wakey hours when other folks were fast asleep"
Mrs. Christabel Caine:
Dear Madam:
"I am a Junior in High School. I have been given you as a subject for an essay, and would be obliged if you would tell me some facts about yourself that would be of interest, also what caused you to write each of your books and something about what you have wished to express in them, and anything else you can think of"
"Dear Christabel Caine (For a Dear you are and ever will be, for writing your Beautiful Books)
"I'm not quite a stranger, for although you've never heard of me, I know you intimately, and I've chuckled with you and I've wept with you (Yes, truly!) and in all my life nothing, except feeling the wind blow through my hair in a sailboat, and stealing (don't look so shocked!) a sprig of lavender, sun-kissed and bee-beset, from Ann Hathaway's garden, has given me quite the same sort of utterly joyous delight your books have"
From the clipping bureau came best-seller lists. O Fair Dove. O Fair Dove. O Fair Dove. Reviews. She read:
"Its lovely pages glow with a sort of luminous tenderness, a 'light that never was, on sea or land.'"
"If more novels like O Fair Dove came to the critic's table, how much happier life would be! Written with exquisite sensitiveness and poignant beauty, this whimsical romance demands the use of the important word genius"
So buoyant, she felt she hardly touched the pillow. Drinking the delicious hot coffee, she dreamily reread "exquisite sensitiveness—poignant beauty—genius—" When Curtis looked in to say good morning and good-by she returned his kiss warmly.
"Good-by, darlingest! Isn't it a day straight from heaven?" She kissed her finger-tips, fluttered them toward the door, and, still smiling, drew out the next clipping.
"Ever since women discovered that novel-writing is infinitely preferable to housekeeping, and much less exacting, they have written innumerable stories. O Fair Dove, by Christabel Caine, is just another of them. The story, buried under would-be whimsicality, is ordinary, the characters are puppets, and the ending is a relief. The exhausted reader may well wonder whether he or the authoress has wasted the more time."
There was a pain in her chest. How could people be so unkind? How could even jealousy make them so cruel?" She was terribly, terribly hurt. Not that she minded honest criticism, she welcomed it, but this was wanton abuse. With hands that shook she tore the clipping into tiny pieces—tiny
The twins came tearing in, flinging their arms around her, scrambling up on the bed. She put her hands over her ears.
"Gently, darlings! Mother doesn't feel very well this morning. Marigold! Be careful of that tray! Now go to Mademoiselle at once, both of you!"
With the match that lit her cigarette she touched the torn clipping on the ash tray. It writhed and turned to ash. "luminous tenderness she read again genius" she read again. "genius." "Some more reviews for you to paste in," she said, handing them to Ellen Beach, who came in with her engagement book.
"May I read them? Oh, what nice ones! Isn't it marvelous, there hasn't been a single unfavorable review of O Fair Dove, has there? Not that there ought to be, only it's so wonderful that people really appreciate it."
"What do I have to do today, Ellen? Luncheon at Pierre's, Ivan Korovine's class, tea with Austin Weeks, and the Treasure Seekers here for dinner. I'll see Mrs. Briton about dinner now."
"Mrs. Caine's train gets in at four."
"Oh, Ellen, no! Is it today mother's coming? Well, send the big car for her, and tell her I'm heartbroken and I'll be back just as early as I possibly can. That makes it awfully awkward about dinner"
"I needn't come"
"Ellen, don't be silly! With your young man coming? No, I'll manage somehow. Mother may be too tired to want to come down, anyway."
Mrs. Britton entered. Spring lamb, green peas. The telephone rang. Ellen asked over her shoulder if Mrs. Carey would see some one from the World? Minnie asked, which dress? Asparagus, perhaps, instead of a salad. The telephone rang. Would Mr. and Mrs. Carey dine with Mrs. Wickett next Thursday, with bridge afterward? Beige dress, Minnie, and the dark brown hat. Strawberry mousse in a spun sugar basket. Mrs. Carey is extremely sorry
She was ready to go out at last, in the red-and-black car, so small, so smart, looking as if one wound it up with a key, with Bates seeming so a part of it that one almost expected to see a tiny crack running down his front, splitting a black tin cap and a pink tin nose, one felt that an iron tail must run into a hole in the seat, to keep him steady.
Buying her own books, she thought, how excited this little person would be if he knew I was the author! She felt like a queen incognito.
"Did I understand you to say twelve copies of O Fair Dove? Is that correct?"
And she answered, graciously, laughingly:
"Alas, yes! That's the penalty of writing a book, so many people expect the poor author to give them copies!"
His eyes and his mouth were three round O's, she thought, walking up Fifth Avenue, amused and touched. Well, that was a real thrill in his dull day. She could hear him telling the other clerks: "That was Christabel Caine! That lady I was just waiting on!"
The day was so lovely that she had sent the car away. Turning down a side street, she went into the Catholic church where she liked to say her prayers or meditate. Sometimes she longed to be a Catholic. If only she could stop thinking, how restful it would be.
Beyond the rood screen lights wavered in white and blue cups, banked into shapes of hearts and crosses, on either side of the altar, where a nun knelt, rose to dust the vases of artificial lilies, knelt again. All work should be done that way, with love and prayer, Christabel thought. Other nuns knelt motionless. She was kneeling with them. She was kneeling alone, the bride of Christ, lost in ecstasy, while out in the church, heartbroken, adoring, knelt Elliott and Maurice and the new poet who was coming to dinner tonight. She almost added Curtis, but the thought of him floated out without embodying.
Oh, to be there, safe and at peace, free of earthly possessions, free of self-hood, wrapped in love forever!
But out on the Avenue again, she knew that God wanted His children to be happy and free in His sunshine! Everything was holy, if you had eyes to see. She looked with seeing eyes at a top-shaped female in black satin, at a taxi that came squealing to the curb in answer to her look, at her florist's window.
"Good morning, Mr. Johnson . . . Yes, indeed, divine! Quantities of flowers, please—mimosa for the drawing room, I think—you know how much I need. I'm just going to be banal and have a few tulips for the library, those flame-colored ones and a few mauve. . . . Oh, I don't know, three or four dozen. Now what have you, really intriguing, for the dinner table? I'm using the ruby glass tonight. . . . Not, not a very big dinner, twenty people, and not a bit the roses-silver-pheasants type"
What a difference it makes, being human with people, she thought, as Mr. Johnson flung himself into originality, bringing flowers like lobster claws for her inspection, flowers like strings of doll's china eyes, as he presented her with a spray of jasmine to wear.
She turned back, as she was leaving, to order a big purple basket of double and single violets for the Glenworthy girls, Clothilde, Eugénie, Ellaline, poor old maids, relics of her mother's girlhood. They adored her, and she had seen their letters to her mother, telling of all the wonderful things she had done for them. She did try to be thoughtful. When she had them to tea she was never at home to other callers, for she told herself they wouldn't want to meet anyone, they were so shabby, coming in scarecrow finery, always bringing some pathetic present. Last time, half a dozen drying daffodils with lots of asparagus fern, lost in her roomful of flowers. "We tried to get Mariposa lilies because of that lovely poem of yours your dear mother very kindly sent us, but the florists didn't seem to know what they were." She had been so touched, and had filled their arms from the drawing-room vases when they went. She loved to heap gifts on them, poor old things—an armful of novels, a nearly full box of marrons glacés. That last time, Elliott had called up to ask if he might come to tea, and she had had to hustle them off. She had been meaning to do something nice to make up. She would ask them to dinner, tomorrow, with mother, just a nice intimate time, with no one else, and then they would all go to the Racine revival that Countess du Sanglier had arranged and that Mrs. Towne had sent her tickets for. That would be a real thrill for them, and it would be a delight to hear some pure French. She wrote on her card, to go with the violets, "Will you dine and go to the theater tomorrow? I'll send the motor at seven. Most affectionately, C. C. C."
Why did so few people realize that the only sure way of being happy was to make others happy?
It was a day for a new hat. Everyone in the shop swam at her.
"Isn't that peculiar, Mrs. Carey, Miss M'ree was just this morning speaking of you, wasn't she, girls? We have some lovely things to show you—Gladys, bring that Maria Guy with the banana ribbon—and listen, dear, the blue ballibuntl, you know, the one with the choux over the ear, and, honey! Listen! Tell Miss M'ree Mrs. Carey's here, I know she'll want to see her."
Marie herself appeared. "Misss-us Carey, good morning! No, no, no! Take these away. Bring me the little black horsehair with the nose veil that hasn't been shown yet."
"Oh, adorable!"
"Doesn't moddom look adorable?"
"A work of art," Marie pronounced.
"A picture!"
"It looks just like moddom, doesn't it?"
That was in an undertone, for her to overhear. She was on to their ways! But it did, it was a divine hat.
"I must take it with me! I must wear it out to lunch. Will you call me a taxi, please?"
Waiting for it, she remembered to ask about Miss Lola's headaches, Miss Vera's sister, who used to be in the shop before her marriage. "What a memory!" they exclaimed, pleased and flattered, and through their exclamations she heard Miss Pearl saying to another customer, just audibly:
"Christabel Caine, who wrote O Fair Dove."
Alfred was scurrying into her sitting room with orange tulips. She had caught the servants by surprise, for she had said she wouldn't be in until after lunch. But she was human with him, too; she saw his face relax a little as he went to get her a cocktail.
A press photographer took her picture as she entered Pierre's, a careful ten minutes late. Maurice kissed her hand and noticed her hat, the head waiter had a charmed murmur as he led them to their table, friends saluted as they passed.
"Come to a movie after lunch. There's a new one with the intriguing Charlot."
"Alas! I have to go on to my class. Ivan Korovine, you know, the Russian who had something to do with—with—I can't remember his name for the moment, the one who had that place in France. He teaches you to free yourself through color and rhythm, and he has simply marvelous ideas about sex sublimation."
"Ah, little grown-up girl! You think you are too old for a doll, so you play with your soul!"
"Play, Maurice! It isn't play, it's intense concentrated work. I come away limp. But it makes life seem a very different thing. I don't think I ever before this year, fully realized its intensity and reality."
"Come to the movies. Movies and jazz and burlesque queens and—what else? Vermilion and magenta—seem to me as real intensities as you'll find in a rather vague world."
"Well, of course, everyone admits that Charlie Chaplin is our one great tragedian. But"
"If you don't, you will be sorry tomorrow, when I am to be very ill."
Through the new nose veil she made round questioning eyes.
"Certainly. Haven't you heard that maman is patronne for an evening of Racine?"
"And you, too, dread it?"
"No, I simply avoid it."
"Moi aussi!"
Mademoiselle could go with mother and the Glenworthy girls. It would be a glimpse of heaven for her and she could translate anything they couldn't understand.
"So come to the movies!"
She yielded, laughing. "But I must be through in time to get down to a studio on Ninth Street for tea. A man is doing a portrait of my precious twinnies that I promised to come and criticize. Oh, Maurice, I really dread it! I can't tell you why—yes, I think I will, after all! You see, I'm terribly afraid he's in love with me, poor darling—I can tell you this, you being you, without being afraid that you'll think I'm conceited, it's simply that it's such a problem, I don't know what to do, and I need advice. Do you think you could put yourself in the position of a gentleman laid low by my fatal charm?"
"C'est moi."
"You see, he's such a sensitive person that if I'm horrid to him, as I suppose I should be, he might do anything, and if I'm kind to him, that's even worse! I want to help him, and I don't know what to do. It makes me triste à pleurer! I only tell you because it's rather an interesting situation psychologically, and because you'll never know who the man is."
"Don't begin to worry about the men who love you, or you'll have time for nothing else."
"Oh, Maurice! Flatteur!" She smiled, delicately self-mocking. But her heart gave a skip. I've never seen him look so—so as if he were holding something in. Oh, my poor Maurice! not you, too? And aloud she cried, in a voice that annoyed her by sounding fluttered:
"Oh, I don't think any pastry! Well—one of those strawberry tarts, because it's spring, and if I can't eat any tea I shall tell Austin Weeks you're to blame."
When Curtis came home from the office there was either silence, that meant Christabel was out, or the twitter of voices as he passed the library door on the way to his room. And although he vaguely knew that the voices were settling things, beauty, truth, real art, immortality, sex in its relation to this or that, and the meaning of life, it never occurred to him that it could matter whether or not the sound remained twitter or was resolved into words. Sometimes Christabel called him in, tipping a cheek to his polite kiss, clinging to him with a white hand, asking, "Darling, some tea?" Sometimes she allowed him to tiptoe upstairs to relax on his sofa with the market quotations and a highball.
This evening there was silence. He caught a glimpse of Smedley arranging a centerpiece, launching himself across so big a table that Curtis knew Christabel and he must be giving a dinner. He would have liked to see his children, but it annoyed Nurse to have him come in at supper-time. She said it made them show off, sticking out their lips at their lovely cereal, and jumping about, and later Michael, who was easily excited, was apt to imagine lions under the bed. And Christabel supported her.
No sign of Christabel. Out with an affinity, probably. I believe I'll get an affinity, myself. Adele Wickett? She's pretty, even if Christabel doesn't think so, and she nearly dies laughing when I tell her a joke. Or Helen Vanessi, with her black hair low on her white neck, and those eyes—oh, boy! She likes me, too, he thought.
Well, he would just have a look at the stock quotations. Dropping down on his sofa with a sigh, the paper slid from his hand. I am very, very tired, he thought. A hard day. Donelly says he can get me three cases of the real prewar stuff. A very hard day. That lobster at lunch was certainly nice and tender
He yawned, arching his back, stretching out his arms, grasping air.
Poor old Harry. I'll never see that money again
Keep my left arm straight—left arm straight—a white ball ran across a stretch of green and trickled into the cup. Ought to get dressed—very very tired—very very very tired